A cute little point and click puzzle game.

I enjoyed it for what it was. Mostly easy puzzles that logically make sense. However there were a few I found to be unreasonably obtuse.

There is not much to say about the game. It's cute. Has a good art style. It works. It doesn't overstay its welcome. Nice and short.

It's not mind blowing or anything. Good for a one time playthrough. I'll never play it again. It's very middle of the road. It does what it does fine enough.

A short but entertaining horror/classic adventure game experience.

The art style is very effective, clean and pleasant or overly detailed and grotesque as the situation warrants and it still manages to feel coherant. Some of the concepts are very effective, but I don't think the game coheres well enough together.

The game goes a little too far with gross out bodily function stuff to be to my taste.

One dark and stormy night, Bulb Boy awakens from a nightmare to find his grandpa missing and the house full of monsters! What evil lurks in the shadows and how did it get here? Why is it terrorizing Bulb Boy?

What plays out is more Ren and Stimpy Halloween Special than Little Nightmares. Lots of poop and bodily fluids, less scary styff.

Visuals

Bulb Boy has a very distinctive look. It’s 2D and appears to be hand drawn. The coloring is very limited. Imagine night-vision goggles and infrared. The majority of the game is played in shades of green, lit by Bulb Boy’s glowing head. Death scenes are tinged in red. Everything else is shades of black, white, and grey. It definitely adds to the weird, creepy vibe the game has going for it. There are brighter sections, but they’re still green. I actually really like the way it looked.

Bulb Boy himself is really cute, as is his flying dog. Grandpa cracked me up, once I realized what he was.

Sound Effects + Music

The music in Bulb Boy is minimal. When it does play it’s very repetitive, but it’s a super short game, so I get not having a lot of variety. The sound effects are similarly limited, but fine. Lots of squishing noises and other sounds you’d expect from bodily functions. Bulb Boy’s cry is cute; he kind of sounds like a scared puppy.

Gameplay + Controls

Bulb Boy is a point-and-click adventure. Simply move Bulb Boy around the room, and when something can be interacted with an arrow will appear. Select it, and he’ll either pick it up to add to his inventory, or something else unexpected might happen. Most puzzles were straight forward enough. There are plenty of hints that give you an idea of what to do, usually in the form of a thought bubble or signage. Some parts are a little confusing or just repetitive (having to do the same action multiple times to get the result), but nothing too bad.

This is a Horror game, so things do get very dark, very quickly. You will die, but you just respawn right where you left off. There weren’t any jump scares, just creepy looking monsters around every turn. Like I said before, it’s mostly gross out stuff rather than truly horrifying.

Replayability

Bulb Boy took me less than two hours to finish, so it’s not a game that would be hard to replay to grab any missing achievements. I personally would not play it again, especially since Switch doesn’t even have achievements.

Overall

Bulb Boy is a fine game. It was quick and weird and not a bad way to pass the time. It wasn’t quite what I was hoping for though.

Adventure games are always hit or miss as they have many classics to live up to. There are the occasional crazy and interesting adventure games like Neverending Nightmares that are quite fascinating. Bulb Boy is one such game where play as a, well, bulb boy who must defeat a monster to save his grandfather. There’s not much of a story here as it’s all about atmosphere and visuals. The game is rather short and it’s not the most cerebral adventure game out there, but it’s worth a purchase.

Like your typical adventure game you can tap on areas for the character to move to and examine items. Bulb Boy is very straight to the point so there’s not much exploring here. There’s only so much to click on and very little inventory. The game has bosses on each stage that you must defeat, but the puzzles are very easy and not really puzzles. You find an object and it can only go in one place as there’s no backtracking or exploring involved. I would love to see this universe expand as Bulb Boy is grotesque, beautiful, and full of atmosphere. It’s a horror adventure with a cartoon flair with guts and everything disgusting all over the screen.

There’s a lot of green in this game and the cut-out art style is just fantastic. I enjoyed playing through the whole game despite only taking a couple of hours. Bulb Boy’s death animations are brutal, there’s a lot of variety, and the game has a nice quick pace to it. Some of my favorite things about this game are the extreme closeups of areas as it shows the sickly detail of everything around this character. It’s nightmarish for sure and definitely one of the most artistic games this year.

It’s a crying shame that this is an indie game and won’t get much attention. I hope for a sequel that’s more expanded, but we’ll see. In the mean time just feast your eyes on the beautiful art despite how straightforward and simple the gameplay is.